27 October 2009
If you see a dog walking down the street without it's owner, you would at least probably notice it. If you are an animal lover or maybe just a concerned citizen, you might stop the car and attempt to secure the dog before it gets hurt. You might also call animal control so that they could attempt to catch the stray dog if you were unable to do it. If you saw a stray cat roaming down your street would attempt to catch it? The realistic answer is absolutely not! You might be more inclined to leave it some food! You are also highly unlikely to call animal control unless the feline is yowling in your backyard at night, pooping in your rose bushes, or spraying all over your back door! Or worse yet, having kittens underneath your shed or in your attic, or inside a an infrequently used vehicle, etc.
Love them or hate them, community cats are not simply going to go away. Las Vegas is at the nexus of a perfect storm for feline overpopulation. We have a highly transient population that lives a very disposable lifestyle. Our weather conditions allow female cats to have as many as four litters per year. Multiple plentiful food sources for cats exist which can never be completely eliminated. Very few if any predators control cat populations in urban areas.
Cats are so disposable here, that an owned cat, has less than a 3% chance of being recovered by it's owner if it ends up at a shelter. Last year the over 18,000 cats were euthanized which works out to 50 cats a day, every single day of the year! As frightening as the intake and euthanasia numbers for Clark County are, the more frightening fact is that they've been growing by 10% a year for a number of years!
It's estimated that some 200-500,000 community cats exist in the Vegas Valley. Some believe there could actually be closer to 750,000! As long as there are so many community cats, it wouldn't matter if we had 100% spay/neuter rate amongst owned cats. A percentage of kittens from unspayed mom's is always going to find it's way into rescue and adoption groups. Many of those that end up in shelters become fodder for the needle.
The numbers of community cats are so large, we will never be able to either rescue nor euthanize our way out of this problem. The community cats need to be managed, which means in a nutshell: counting them, fixing them, and monitoring them afterwards. If you feed community cats outside, register as a feral colony caretaker with the Central Sponsor at http://www.clarkcountyferalcats.org. The Central Sponsor will not share your information with animal control. Ear tipped cats belonging to a registered colony have some protections under the 10.06 ordinance. If they are trapped by a citizen and end up at the county shelter, the Central Sponsor is contacted. If the cat can be matched to a colony/caretaker where it was trapped, it will be released back to the caretaker for $17 (the cost of a microchipping and vaccination update) to be returned to its colony. Need help managing your colony? We offer training classes in TNR, loan traps, and help connect caretakers with low-cost or grant funded spay/neuter slots. We are also working on ways to provide caretakers with food at considerable cost savings!
What other ways can you help? Spay/neuter all owned pets. Register your owned cats and dogs with the county. Registrations allow them to collect better information on pet ownership in the county. If you are registering a new car, get "Animal Appreciation" license plates. The money collected from pet registrations and spay/neuter license plates is used to support county spay/neuter programs.
Don't let your cat roam outside, or if you do (in violation of county ordinances) have them microchipped and consider having their ear tipped. If I catch an eartipped cat in a trap, I will release it shortly if not immediately. If there is no tipped ear, the cat is at best getting a couple of days cooling out in a trap and a ride to the clinic, and at worst, anesthesia and surgery to discover it's already been neutered! If you're pissed off neighbor traps your cat, they could end up at the county animal shelter. If your cat does disappear, check the shelter to see if it's there! They are only required to keep you cat for 72-hours so time is of the essence if your cat gets taken to the shelter as a stray.
Consider donating money or volunteering for an organization that helps community or feral cats, or supports spay/neuter programs. As I stated before, we will never euthanize or adopt our way out of the community cat overpopulation problem. Let's manage them through Trap Neuter Return (TNR) which has proven to be effective in so many communities.
26 October 2009
When I decided to start trapping feral cats, I quickly stumbled upon the passionate ravings of drop trap enthusiasts. I was intrigued by the idea of trapping with a device like this, because their supporters claimed they were so effective. Every place that claimed to produce them commercially was out of stock or back ordered! I found a relatively simple design here, and basically copied it. The drop trap I produced was sturdy and functional, but as of yet untested.
I was poking around a feeding station at a colony where we were preparing to trap when I met Greg. He demanded to know what I was doing as he had previously seen attempts at poisoning the cats with antifreeze at a nearby location. When I told him I was scouting the area in preparation for TNR, he quickly warmed up. I found out that Greg was sick with lung cancer. In another six weeks he would need to go to Tuscon for several weeks of treatment. One of the cats he feeds, "Sleepy" was neutered long ago, but Greg wanted to catch him so he could be moved to a cat sanctuary. Greg had been caring for Sleepy since 2001, and he was worried about his long-term prospects living in the wash. Sleepy had foiled repeated attempts to catch him using standard traps. Having been trapped before, he would not go in one again. I told Greg about my drop trap and we decided to give it a shot.
On a Tuesday night, Greg, Joe from SOS and I assembled near Sleepy's hangout. Armed with walkie-talkies and a couple hundred feet of pull cord, we setup the drop trap near his feeding spot on a flat piece of ground. Greg was concerned that Sleepy might not climb up the six feet to go to the drop trap but I assured him it would be OK. We baited it with some yummy human tuna and took our positions. Joe and Greg moved further up the wash where they could observe Sleepy and the drop trap from a distance. I moved down the wash and descended into to it so I could move to a place where Sleepy could no longer see that I was there.
In less than a minute, Joe radioed me that Sleepy was in the trap. Heart racing, I poked my head up ever so slowly so that I could verify that he was in a good position. Satisfied that he was completely underneath the trap, I pulled the rope connected to the stick that was propping up the trap. Weather stripping dampened the sound of the drop trap falling, but the prop stick made and extremely loud noise! Sleepy's buddy went bounding up the wash in alarm! I felt a surge of adrenaline race through me as I scrambled up the wash to get to the trap.
Feral cats go wild when confined and it's important to immediately cover them so they calm down. Being somewhat tame, Sleepy was rather non-plussed at being confined by the trap. He absolutely refused to exit the drop trap into the transfer trap. Recognizing the trap from being confined when he was neutered before, he ignored our repeated attempts at cajoling, pleading, prodding, and poking by steadfastly laying down in the center of the trap. Joe summed up all our feelings succinctly, "If only you knew what trouble three grown men were going through for you on a Tuesday night!"
After nearly an hour we decided to cut a small hole in the drop trap mesh in order to reach into the trap. I had some heavy leather gardening gloves. Joe attempted to prod Sleepy to no avail. I finally took the glove reached through the slit and grabbed all 12 lbs of Sleepy by the scruff like he was my baby kitten. Fortunately, Sleepy was quite friendly and gave in like a kitten. I unceremoniously dragged him into the the transfer trap without him hissing or attempting to bite me etc..
It took anthother two trips to the wash to catch Sleepy's pal but we got him too! The next night we returned to discover a cat that Greg had never seen before had moved right into Sleepy's spot! Talk about the vacuum effect! We returned a third time and spotted Sleepy's pal. I watched with binoculars from across the wash while Joe hid out of site with the string. He watched me warily from across the wash, but since I was so far away, after a couple of minutes he went right into the trap. I used the walkie talkie to tell Joe to pull the stick and we got him!
Both cats were relocated to the Happy Home Animal Sanctuary in Searchlight, NV much to Greg's relief..
21 October 2009
Clark County funds 40 neuter slots for feral cats per week with money raised by "Animal Appreciation" license plates, pet licensing fees etc. These 40 slots are usually divided between HCWS and Las Vegas Valley Humane Society and are used to answer trouble calls, colony management etc. on an ad hoc basis. On Oct. 1, representatives of HCWS, LV Humane Society and my group the Clark County Feral Cat Coalition met and discussed focusing the 40 slots in one neighborhood to maximize their effectiveness. Plans were made to trap 40 ferals from a particular neighborhood so that 10 slots per day could be filled the week of Oct. 19th - 22nd.
The surgeries were planned to be performed at the same time as a group of owned pets from the same neighborhood. HCWS held a block party on Oct. 10th at a 35-acre area near Charleston and US 95 dubbed the 'Hawaiin' neighborhood because of it's street names. They micro-chipped, vaccinated animals, and scheduled appointments for owned pets to be neutered for free. At the block party, we gathered extensive information about where feral cats were concentrated in the neighborhood. When it was determined that there were upwards of 150 feral cats in the neighborhood, a decision was made to up the feral surgery slots from 10 to 40 per day!
Trapping began on Sat Oct 17th around 6:30 PM. Twelve volunteers set out with over a 130 traps and the goal of delivering 100 cats on the first night. At around 11:00 PM as we wrapped up, 95 cats and 1 Chihuahua had been trapped and delivered to the clinic! The next morning, 7 more were in traps pushing us over our goal! We continued trapping on successive nights and finally ended up with 140 cats to TNR. Their surgeries were supposed to be performed over four days but the HCWS doctors over-performed and completed 35 surgeries on the first day and 101 on the second! The remaining cats were sick so their surgeries will be delayed until they are healthier.
There were some bumps in our otherwise smooth sailing....out of 33 owned dog surgeries from the area which were scheduled for Oct 20th, 9 people no-showed, brought a different animal, etc.... The house where I trapped, there are a couple of women who feed about 35 feral cats. I was able to trap 32, but was sabotaged by them feeding the remaining three cats before they could be trapped. Since they will no longer allow us access to trap, these three are unlikely to be caught before the others are released.
This is the first time that a cooperative effort has been made between the various feral cat groups to mount such a large mass trapping in a single area. Overall, I'd have to say it was a very successful operation! We met our goals and exceeded our timeline.
Updated Oct 22:
For the area targeted by the pet fair, the totals were 59 males and 65 females for a total of 124 trapped. Four were ABS (already been spayed) so 120 were TNR'd. An additional 14 cats were trapped just outside of the target area so those numbers are not included in these totals.
Here's the data plotted on google maps.
A short video of cats convalescing after surgery.
For more information about TNR in Clark County and the 10.06 ordinance that legalizes feral colony management, go to http://www.clarkcountyferalcats.org
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